Rants

I introduce the rants section, where I can rant and ramble to my heart's content about some of the stupidest e-mails/message board posts/IMs I've seen/recieved.

This should be interesting.

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Rant #1 - Random IMs

It annoys me to no end when someone IMs me and asks this very question: "Who are you?" Most of the time, it's more like "who ru", but that's not the point.

The point is, why am I even on people's AIM/ICQ contact lists if they can't tell who I am? If they catch me online, can't they open an IM window and click profile to see who I am instead of IMing me that question?

No, they're lazy/ignorant and don't bother to do that. After all, why bother when someone can tell you in one or two words?

It also annoys me to no end when people ask how to join Hogwarts or how I make my websites through AIM. If they were a bit more observant, they'd see the clear 'FAQ' and 'Join' links on the Hogwarts page, and with Adriennewolter.com it's also pretty self-explanatory, I mean a tutorial wouldn't be in the 'me' or 'site' sections, would it now? Personally, I'd page through an entire site before IMing someone a question about where to find something or how to do something, but that may because I love the anonymity that the internet provides. It may also be because, after experiencing the upkeep of an extremely busy, high-maintenance site for almost two years, I know what it's like to be bombarded with stupid little questions several thousand times.

But whatever.

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Rant #2 - People Who Cannot/Refuse to Read

It seems like a stupid question, but why would anyone use the internet if they can't read?

Because it sure seems that everyone who tries to join my site and applies when joins aren't accepted can't read.

I mean, there's a clearly marked link that says 'join', and next to it is: (April 19th and 20th). I mean, doesn't that obviously mean that sortings aren't being processed at the moment?

And, to compliment that, on the other side, there's a thingy that says, in plain English, "Joins will be accepted April 19th and 20th!"

Maybe these people can read, they just don't know what the date is.

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Rant #3 - The Right-Click Block

Isn't it just lovely, how when you surf the internet and find a really neato page, and you don't want to lose your place so you right-click to open in a new window, and an alert pops up caller you a thief?

The right-click block code's time has long been over. Not only is it the most annoying thing in the world, but it's so easily worked around that it's not worth it, putting it on your pages.

For one thing, there are a million and three ways to work around it. These vary from direct-linking the image, to typing in the url of the image into the browser and right-clicking it then, to prntscrn-ing the image and just cropping it in some simple program like MS Paint.

And it not only blocks off right-clicking on images, it blocks off right-clicking on links, backgrounds, and anywhere else on the page.

I am a geek. Yes, I'll admit it. I am a geeky kid who has been using computers since the age of three months, no joke. I grew up in a software business background. My Dad programs software, does java and coldfusion work, knows practically every html code there is, and knows the VB (Visual Basic) programming language inside out. My Mum updates several websites that she is paid or volunteers to work on, along with Cniche's website, Cniche's images, and answering geeky questions for people. I run five or six websites, know most basic html, have used the internet for about a decade, and I have a picture of me playing a DOS game at 6 months (which anyone reading this will NEVER SEE, haha).

My point is, I use the internet a lot, along with the rest of my family, and know almost everything about it. You ask me an internet-related question, there's a 99% chance I can answer or find the solution within 5 minutes.

Right-click codes are NOT cool. I'm done now.

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Rant #4 - Java Cursors

You decide to go onto a site to research for a homework assignment, and what's the first thing that loads? Yes. A Java cursor that annoyingly follows the mouse everywhere, is mega-distracting because it animates, and slows the entire site down.

Java cursors are just stupid, let me bring that up first. What's the point? I, and I'm sure a lot of other people, close a window right away if I find one. They are too danged distracting!! They are often the first thing that loads, and on slow connection speeds like dialup, take forever, slowing what the users want to see (the content) down.

And ones with long, trailing words, ahh!! The words are so long that whenever the viewer moves the mouse, the computer slows down everything because there's not enough memory to animate everything smoothly. Then, when you're trying to read the actual page, the freaking letters get in the way. :P

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Rant #5 - Animated backgrounds

I was looking at a site the other day, and nothing showed up except the frame for a whole two minutes before the other half showed up. Why? Because the actual page had a huge, animated starburst background behind the text. When it loaded, it crashed my entire computer. Lovely.

Animated backgrounds are a waste of space on your server. You can never read anything on them because the animation attracts your eyes to it instead of the text. Big no-no.

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Rant #6 - Entrance Pages/Splash Pages

I'm not exactly sure why, but I've always found entrance pages utterly annoying. Often, they have these huge graphics which basically say 'enter', but take forever to load.

I can see the use of them - for example, if you have a site in a pop-up window (which I also find mega annoying, but that's probably because I'm a real anti-scroll, anti-tiny frames person), you need a place for the person to click the link to the pop-up, or if you have frames and no-frames versions - but they irk me if it's just a site in a normal window. Just get to the content already!

Oh, and don't even get me started on them when they have huge images, lots of little (or huge) adopted images, an animated background, looping music that you can't turn off....

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Rant #7 - "I read your diary/blog/journal."

A lot of people say this or something to that extent. You may wonder what's up with me despising that phrase, but let me explain.

Let's start with this dictionary definition, shall we?

Read^1 - \'red\ vb: past tense; to have completed understanding a written script. (~ a book)

Note the 'completed'. When you read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, you looked at and understood every page. When you read poetry, you read every line.

These people are technically indicating that they read my entire diary. I find that hard to believe, as my diary/blog/whatever has more than 300 entries.

Now, in the technical sense, I have read Ara and Eloria's journals, and I continue to do so. I've read every single entry. The same holds true with Isi's diary and Percy's fanfic (very good read, see it on his site). They most likely haven't done them same with mine, because I update it nearly every day with day-to-day ramblings, nothing too important or interesting.

When people tell that phrase to me, I get somewhat annoyed, heh. Not too big a deal with close friends, but with people I don't know that well, it irks me.

But whatever. I'll just retreat back into my perfectionistic world.

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Rant #8 - Shorthand

Shorthand, or the use of a letter to stand for a word, gets on my nerves.

Well, just certain types of it. Ty, lol, oc, brb... they're fine. But when people type things like 'l8r', 'thanx', 'c', 'yea', and 'u', it gets really annoying.

First things first. The things like 'l8r' and 'thanx' probably require more thinking than just typing out 'later' and 'thanks'. You're only skipping typing a few letters, it majorly bugs a lot of people (like yours truly), and the things are freakishly hard to understand when you use a lot of them.

For the ones like 'ic', 'u', 'ur', and 'im', it starts getting annoying.

Ic, u, and ur are stupid and only cut off a few letters. You can probably type the whole word without thinking just as quickly as the shortcut. Im can stand for too many things at once, so what's the purpose of not putting the apostrophe?

Ahem.